Bedtime for Democracy?

A discussion of the new concept civil society vs. civic community and a series of fresh debates about how it should be defined. A discussion of the following questions: What is the citizen’s proper role within the state’s structure? How should citizenship be determined and defined?, What degree of interaction should take place between the citizen and the state?. These are just a few questions that plagued philosophers and theorists such as Locke, Hegel and Kant in the many years that followed the transition from subject to citizen.

“As the sixteenth century drew to a close, great intellectual and technological advancements triggered winds of change that swept through Europe, forever changing the region’s social and political landscape. Gradually, absolutist monarchs whose royal lineage had ruled for centuries saw their power erode in the face of an emerging merchant class and revolutionary philosophical ideas about government. The enlightenment had arrived and with it came a groundbreaking notion: citizenship. No longer were the masses subject to the arbitrary rule of an omnipotent autocrat. Instead, they now possessed some degree of political self-determination.”